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Mariposa,, The New Love of My Life

Look at those eyelashes! How can a guy NOT fall in love.
Eat your heart out,, Krisnia!

And,, she is already pregnant and due in a month.
Less work! Fourteen teats,, two more than her last farrowing of 12 chanchitos. Everyone eats with this girl. This will be her second parto.

What's not to like (maybe that snout)? But,, she seems to be OCD about keeping it clean. She is constantly dunking it into her water bucket and rinsing it off. She is a welcome distraction in my life right now. I scratch her ears and sing "Completamenta Tuya"
I just hope I don't wind up like this guy (only on TRN):

"The American Landrace is a white hog of long body length, having sixteen or seventeen pairs of ribs. The arch of back is much less pronounced than on most other breeds of swine. For some hogs the back is almost flat. The head is long and rather narrow and the jowl is clean. The ears are large and heavy and are carried close to the face. There is an admirable meatiness about them on foot and particularly on the rail. The rumps are long and comparatively level and the hams are plump but trim. The sides are long, of uniform depth, and well let down in the flank. The sows are prolific and satisfactory mothers. The sow have always been noted for their milk producing abilities. Studies have shown that they reach their top milk production after five weeks of lactation which is later than other breeds compared"

I have room for a second sow. The math here is interesting. She farrows twice a year, dropping 10 or 12 chanchitos. I was quoted 2000 cords for two month piglets, although my current vendor says he will sell for 1500. That is still twice what you would pay for a "criollo",, My first two were criollos

I feed them a combination of my ground corn,, some concentrado, and molasses. Table scraps.
Mariposa is getting two liters of milk a day, due to her advanced pregnancy.

They take six months to come to a dressed weight of 160 lbs (from 235 gross,, and some of that other is usable to feed the chickens with). You can grow them bigger,, but you get off the feed/weight gain curve much above 230. In other words,, they are eating more than they are putting on.

Once she settles in,, I'm going to see if she respects my electric fence. If so,, the next time around she could spend some time outside her pen. She's too close to parto at the moment to let her out of the pen. She was being kept in a concrete enclosure about an eighth of the size of what she has now.

The stench at the place I got her from was overwhelming. Whether my wood shavings (cascaria in spanish) will control the odor as they are doing with the chickens is still not known.

She digs a hole into the shavings the length of her abdomen (which are about 8 inches deep now) and puts her panza into the hole, grunts a bit, puts her head down, and closes her eyes. I wish I could find that contentment in my life right now.

Re: Mariposa,, The New Love of My Life

Originally Posted by KeyWestPirate

Look at those eyelashes! How can a guy NOT fall in love.
Eat your heart out, Krisnia!

What a hot bare-naked babe! And so fully-fleshed, with such perk nipples!

In Cornwall, England, honest hog farmers may have to worry about old biddy neighbors, but in Condega, Nicaragua, you may have to turn up the juice on that electric fence to prevent horny drunks from taking advantage of your babe, esp. considering her state.

Re: Mariposa,, The New Love of My Life

The new Belarus tractors look pretty spiffy,, the old ones were pretty basic.
Even the commies are moving on.
The world is changing,,, some days I feel like a dinosaur.

Mariposa wakes up on the wrong side of the bed (or wallow) but if I had a belly like that to haul around I would be pretty testy in the mornings too. Thing almost drags the ground. Reminds me of Ariana in her last month. Minus the snout.

I warmed her milk this morning,, just to show here how much I love her. She still tipped over her water dish, her water bucket, and her feed plate, in that order. Luckily I hadn't put the milk in yet.

It takes her a while,, but she settles down and starts eating seriously. And seriously it is, the girl can put down the chow when she puts her mind (and mouth) to the task. I figure her due date at March 15,, but Ariana was due on Christmas and didn't drop Sebastian until the 8th of January.

I'm picking up the stuff I need today,, a long glove that goes up to the shoulder in case I need to reach in and dislodge one of the piglets, lubricant (what WAS the name of that stuff they used to advertise on TV?? I want only the best for Mariposa), iron shots for the piglets (they are born anemic). Oxytocin, just in case,, had to use that on Ariana to get her started. Pigs and humans are supposed to be very similar.

I have antibiotic and anti-inflammatory on hand.

"Boil some water and get me some clean sheets" the country doc used to say on the old westerns.